I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telephone systems and more particularly to telephone systems in which callers are put on-hold pending availability of an agent or automated attendant to take the call.
II. Description of Prior Art
One of the more frustrating problems facing both consumers and purveyors of goods and services is handling of telephone calls. As is typical, the receiving party has only so many agents or automated attendant systems available to handle calls, yet often receives many more calls than can be handled at the time. This problem is especially aggravated at peak call times such as when a television ad invites callers to call an 1-800 number for example. The result is that the calls are automatically put on-hold. The caller must sit at the phone and listen, usually to recordings trying to sell the purveyor's goods and services, or telling the customer how important her call is, until an operator or other agent (e.g., a human or an electronic system) is available to answer the call directly. Many customers are so frustrated that they simply hang up. The result is lost business opportunities for the commercial enterprise along with a possible loss of goodwill as that caller informs others of the difficulty. Even in those cases where the caller remains on the line to wait, the caller may be angry and difficult to communicate with when the agent finally does get to the call. In such cases, the result is an unhappy employee/agent for the commercial enterprise, and a less-than satisfied clientele.
Various proposals have surfaced in the past for dealing with the on-hold problem. One proposal is for the receiving telephone system to provide the caller with an estimated hold-time until that call will be answered by an agent. While this information may be helpful where the wait will be relatively short, a caller informed of a long wait might not have the time to remain on the telephone for that long a period, and so may simply hang up in frustration and come away with the feeling of being unimportant to the commercial concern.
Another proposal has been to provide the caller with the opportunity to schedule a return call from the commercial enterprise. Such a proposal is undesirable from a customer service perspective in that it fails to recognize that the timing of the initial call is already based on the convenience of the caller. Any other time is likely not as convenient and thus represents a compromise; an unacceptable compromise in those cases where the timeliness of the call is critical, such as for airline scheduling and the like. Such a scheduled callback approach also raises privacy issues for those callers who prefer not to leave their name and/or phone number merely to request information. At bottom, such systems may suggest to the caller that he should not have called when he did, even though that was the time when the consumer was motivated, and able, to call.
Another system has been proposed in which the calling party has the ability to interrupt the on-hold status of the receiving phone to alert the nearby agent to return to the phone, for example. Such a remote on-hold terminate system is of little value to consumers put on-hold automatically upon receipt of their call, or where no agent is readily available when alerted.
There thus remains an ongoing problem both for consumers and commercial concerns in dealing with the natural peaks and valleys in the inevitable flood of calls in relation to the number of agents available to handle the calls.